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Dietary Restriction, Starvation, Compensatory Growth – ‘Short-Term Fasting Does Not Kill You: It Can Make You Stronger

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Aquatic Animal Nutrition

Abstract

In natural systems, short-term food deprivation (dietary restriction, DR; calorie restriction, CR) occurs frequently and animals have developed strategies to cope with this situation. This process has been in the focus of many ecological and aquacultural studies and will be discussed in this chapter. In general, life history theory assumes trade-offs in resource allocation among growth, self-maintenance and reproduction; complimentarily, evolutionary theory expresses the general expectation that DR will often result in improved survival probability, and extended life span. The response to DR is species-specific and often even specific to subpopulations or clones, and several aquatic species respond to DR with reduced life span and fecundity. In the case of life span extension, one major mechanism appears to be increased stress resistances which can even be passed to succeeding generations, most likely via epigenetic mechanisms. In model organisms, but not yet in fishes or aquatic invertebrates, major signaling pathways have been identified. Provided these mechanisms are better understood in fish and invertebrate species, broodstocks can intentionally be improved, instead of using the stochastic genetic approach.

After food restriction and restoration of favorable food conditions, many, but not all, animals are capable of compensatory growth (CG), that is a period of accelerated growth. A few aquatic species have been found to be able of over compensatory growth, a phenomenon looked extensively for in aquacultural practice, for instance by intermittent feeding. In contrast to DR-mediated increased longevity, regulatory pathways are relatively well understood, likely due to its potential of practical application. However, in many instances CG is not free of costs: often immunity traits are adversely affected.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Bet hedging occurs when organisms suffer decreased fitness in their typical conditions in exchange for increased fitness in stressful conditions (Cohen 1966).

  2. 2.

    Point-of-no-return, where 50% of the individuals have died.

  3. 3.

    Specific growth rate/specific feeding rate.

  4. 4.

    Excerpt taken with permission from Wiley.

  5. 5.

    Although rather comprehensive, the model description by Won and Borski (2013) is still simplified. For more details, refer to the in silico study by Gurney et al. (2003) and the empirical work by Cui et al. (2006) discussed above.

  6. 6.

    It is noteworthy that the administration of vertebrate NPY dramatically increased food intake in both penaeid shrimps, pointing at a conserved role for NPY and possibly a degree of sequence homology in crustacean species, most likely in the part of the hormone that interacts with its receptor.

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Steinberg, C.E.W. (2018). Dietary Restriction, Starvation, Compensatory Growth – ‘Short-Term Fasting Does Not Kill You: It Can Make You Stronger’. In: Aquatic Animal Nutrition. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-91767-2_4

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